What would Churchill have made of Brexit, given his support for a 'United States of Europe'?

Gary Oldman as Churchill in the film Darkest Hour: Churchill later came to support the idea of a United States of Europe
Gary Oldman as Churchill in the film Darkest Hour: Churchill later came to support the idea of a United States of Europe Credit: Darkest Hour

Any British citizen who has seen Joe Wright’s superb dramatisation of Winston Churchill’s first grueling month as prime minister, Darkest Hour, could not have helped but feel the patriotic juices stirring in their veins as Gary Oldman, who plays Churchill, delivers his climactic “We shall fight on the beaches” speech.

This was perhaps Churchill’s greatest and most inspirational piece of oratory; or as the American broadcaster Edward Murrow later put it in explaining how the speech turned the tide and stiffened Parliament’s resolve against the Nazi scourge, Sir Winston “mobilised the English language, and sent it into battle”.

Yet some of Churchill’s most prescient speeches – in particular, the one in which he referred to an “iron curtain” descending over the Continent, and then later his musings on the need for a “United States of Europe” to safeguard the peace – were in fact made after the Second World War had ended and Churchill was in opposition.

The second of these speeches remains to this day the subject of furious debate; would Churchill have been in favour of Brexit, or, given his support for the idea of a union of nations in Europe, against it? Remarkably, the speech still commands a special place on the European Commission’s website as evidence of early British enthusiasm for the idea.

I once put this question to Rupert Soames, chief executive of the outsourcing company Serco, an ardent Remainer and grandson of Sir Winston. By way of answer he told me that Sky News had asked his mother Lady Soames what the great man would have thought about his head shot being used to illustrate the new five pound note; “how on earth would I know; he’s been dead for more than forty years, or hadn’t you noticed?”, was her no nonsense reply.

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Whatever Churchill’s view might have been, the idea of a United States of Europe has taken a significant step forward over the past week with news from Germany of an outline agreement to form a new “grand coalition” government. Without a German administration mandated to pursue specific EU policies, European integration cannot make further progress.  More importantly still, centre stage in this 28 page draft are proposals that go substantially beyond anything we have seen before from Germany in pursuit of a more integrated future. 

In particular, it sanctions the allocation of further German funds to support economic stabilisation and structural reform. It also supports the transformation of the European Stability Mechanism into a fully fledged European Monetary Fund underpinned by European law, rather than controlled by national governments. The plan has rightly been labelled “Macron lite”; it doesn’t go as far as the French president has been demanding, but by German standards, these are big concessions. Previous red lines seem to have been crossed.

Whether it survives is, of course, anyone’s guess. Grassroots SDP opposition might overturn the whole idea of a new grand coalition, plunging Germany back into a state of political turmoil; given that the EU proposals seem to require treaty change, other member states might rebel. Or the hallowed German constitutional court could declare it against the law.

All the same, there is a certain remorseless logic and inevitability about it all. Opposition to further integration is strong and very vocal in Germany, but in practice, its bark is invariably worse than its bite. My guess is that all this and more will eventually happen; it must, or the euro, having survived its first crisis, will inevitably break-up in the next one.

Last week brought news of a breakthrough agreement to form a new Grand Coalition in Germany which envisaged considerably greater European integration. But will it hold? Credit:  Steffi Loos/Getty Images

Where does this leave those members of the EU which are not part of the euro? Britain has made its choice, which is to leave the EU altogether. It might be added that this choice was in effect made many years ago when the UK secured its Maastricht opt out from the single currency. The two monetary jurisdictions have been set on different courses ever since.

Growing frictions reached a head in the eurozone debt crisis, which contributed to intolerable levels of European migration to the UK. The crisis also made it abundantly clear that much greater levels of integration would be required to make the euro work; these were always unlikely to be acceptable to large swathes of the UK electorate, and might arguably have been unduly damaging to the nation’s economic interests in future.

David Cameron’s approach to the problem was to attempt to strengthen the exceptionalism of the UK’s position within the EU. The EU’s high command has much to answer for in adopting such an uncompromising stance. Denying Cameron the degree of exceptionalism he demanded led directly to Britain’s vote for Brexit, and an almighty further headache for an already crisis ridden union.

The great irony is that in a protracted and unnecessarily divisive way, Brexit might eventually deliver the new form of relationship with Europe that Cameron was seeking – close, but not so close that the various necessities of European Monetary Union are allowed to dictate UK law, trade and diplomacy.

It is understandable that Macron and others should want to use Britain’s departure for the purposes of economic land grab, but it is also unacceptable in a Europe which is meant to champion international co-operation and free trade over the pinched nationalism of the past.

Might others similarly diverge? The Visegrad Four – Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia – show the most obvious signs of choosing a different path, even if for the time being security concerns and the EU magic money tree keeps them on side.

Only one of these countries is at present a member of the euro, and although the others are obliged to join once convergence criteria are met, public opposition remains high and there are no current plans for any of them to do so. Sweden and Denmark likewise remain highly resistant to euro-adoption, even though they more than meet the criteria.

Britain is not alone in its unruliness. Its rejection of the EU might indeed be considered a rather better mannered form of rebellion than that of Poland and Hungary, who remain part of the EU while riding roughshod over its core, liberal values and doctrines.

What is clear is that the EU must at some stage reconcile itself to a number of different forms of membership, association and partnership. We cannot know what Churchill would have thought of Brexit. What we do know is that he always considered “jaw-jaw better than war-war”. As we head into crucial trade talks, it is imperative that new ways of better accommodating each other’s needs and priorities are urgently found.